Building Interactive 3D Characters and Social VR

Building Interactive 3D Characters and Social VR

University of London, Goldsmiths, University of London

About this course: Meeting another person is one of the most amazing experiences you can have in Virtual Reality. It is quite unlike communicating through any other medium except a real life face-to-face conversation. Because the other person is life size and shares a virtual space with you, body language works in a way that cannot be done on a flat screen. This course will enable you to create realistic social interactions in VR.
You will learn about both the psychology of social interaction and the practical skills to implement it in Unity3D. We will take you through the basics of 3D character animation and how to create body language. You will learn about how to make characters that can respond to players’ speech and body language. You will also learn about avatars: the virtual representation of other players, and agents: computer controlled NPC characters and how to implement both of them.
As many people have said before us, social is the future of VR. This course will help you become part of the future of Virtual Reality social experiences.

Who is this class for: This class is for people who are interested in becoming Virtual Reality Developers. You don't need any particular experience of development, but some experience of digital creative work (e.g. photoshop, illustrator, digital music) will be helpful. If you are completely new to VR you might want to first follow our courses "Introduction to Virtual Reality", "3D models for Virtual Reality" and "3D Interaction Design in Virtual Reality" which cover the basic concepts and how to create 3D models and interaction design.

In this module you will start to learn about the role of human-like characters in VR. Characters can represent other real people: avatars, or they can be computer controlled: agents. Either way they are the very foundation of social interaction in VR.

Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.

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University of London

The University of London is a federal University which includes 17 world leading Colleges. Our International Programmes were founded in 1858 and have enriched the lives of thousands of students, delivering high quality University of London degrees wherever our students are across the globe. Our alumni include 7 Nobel Prize winners. Today, we are a global leader in distance and flexible study, offering degree programmes to over 50,000 students in over 180 countries. To find out more about studying for one of our degrees where you are, search for 'London International'.